Revaluing Biodiversity as an Alternative for Sustainable Development
Location:
Nueva Esperanza, Cordillera de Colán, Amazonas, Perú
Art Medium:
Murals (on Homes)
Partner:
Asociación para la Conservación Chorrera Blanca
Artist:
The Challenge
Nueva Esperanza sits inside the Cordillera de Colán Key Biodiversity Area in the Tropical Andes of Peru, home to the Yellow-tailed Woolly Monkey, the Andean Spectacled Bear, the Andean Night Monkey, jaguars, and endemic birds. Most residents recognized these species in passing but did not know their conservation status, their endemic status, or the economic potential their protection held for the community. The Numparket waterfall already brings visitors through town, but the community had no way of connecting those visitors to the value of the biodiversity around them.
The Action
• Workshops with youth and parents that diagnosed the area’s three biggest pressures, deforestation, slash-and-burn, and poor solid-waste disposal, surfacing participant-proposed solutions
• A guided field outing to observe local species directly and to introduce others, used as the inspiration for participant drawings of the species they most cared about
• Conversion of those drawings, refined by the project team, into murals painted directly onto the walls of the participants’ homes
• A public closing event in which participants exhibited the murals across the town, explained the species depicted to their neighbors, and read out their personal conservation commitments
The Impact
• 20 murals painted across homes in Nueva Esperanza; twenty times the originally planned single mural, driven by spontaneous resident demand to host one
• A new self-guided biodiversity walk through town for visitors arriving at the Numparket waterfall, with residents themselves explaining the species to tourists
• 14 youth and several mothers and fathers trained as local advocates, with several youth expressing a new ambition to become local tourism guides and to develop a community orchidarium
• A standing community commitment to maintain the murals and to incorporate biodiversity-driven economic activity into the locality’s longer-term development planning
Photo Gallery
